As seems to happen so often in the Ottawa Valley we have been thrust suddenly from winter to spring, and now spring to summer. We've been enjoying a week of extremely warm weather, so warm it feels more like mid-summer than mid-spring. The air conditioner has been uncovered, not yet turned on, since the saving grace is the evening cool-downs, which doesn't happen in the dog days of summer.

In the ravine trilliums are up and blooming, as are the colonies of trout lilies. Everything is leafing out, the deciduous trees themselves appearing to have leaped into leaf, so that now there is a soft green hazy screen throughout the forest. The birds are delirious with ecstatic celebration, sending their voices trilling throughout the area; cardinals, robins, chickadees and song sparrows vying with one another for notice, the woodpeckers occasional laughing maniacally, thumping insects out from under infested bark.

In our gardens the magnolias have begun their protracted, gorgeous blossom. This year we've had to brutally cut back some of the ornamental tree growth in the rock garden, since over the years they've assumed an unanticipated mass, despite their supposed dwarf size, crowding out other growing things that we've given priority status to. That work was done even while it's been so hot, with the sun beating down mercilessly, and now the rock garden is more accessible, running alongside one side of the house, ready for additional renewal ministrations.

Tulips are beginning their bloom, the tree peonies are shooting out their presence, the Japanese quince their lovely little orange blossoms, and even the honeysuckle is making a late appearance, while we're still awaiting some vigorous life to appear from the clematis vines.

Those dreadful lilly-beetle pests that love to infest lilies have already manifested their presence, anticipating the maturity of lilies now emerging from the soil. They've been busy munching away on our snakehead fritillaries, my husband making quick work of them.

The gardens are a wonderful aesthetic resource of pleasure, but lurking within the soil enriched yearly by our kitchen waste turned into organic compost there are always those garden thugs to be aware of.